The management and planning of a telecommunications network is often supported by a data model which models the telecommunications network, and is also often referred to as an inventory. However, the data in the data model is often inaccurate and does not provide a clear view of the actual installed network. This can affect the quality of planning decisions, and lead to the construction of inefficient networks. Without an accurate model automation of service provisioning can also be more difficult.
Planning decisions are also often based on the analysis of high-level service requirements, from which optimized network configurations are derived. However, it is often difficult to adapt existing network structures to conform to these optimized configurations without simply replacing the existing network structures, which is typically not feasible. Physical movement of equipment is also expensive and can cause damage to the equipment. Many telecommunications operators hence prefer to avoid physical restructuring of existing network resources.
The present invention seeks to alleviate some of these problems.